Initiative of Vikas Kumar,Career Counsellor and Psychologist, Ranchi. It is First Counselling Centre in Ranchi where Career Counselling,Engineering Pre counselling,Medical Pre counselling,Admission Counselling, Personal Counselling & Parent Counselling is conducted. Career Aptitude Test is also conducted for Std Xth and beyond. This blog Contains regular Edunews and Exam Notification 2015 & Result Notification 2015. Appointment can be taken on 9709534303.

Monday, 23 December 2013

Placements at top engineering colleges pick up steam

The mood was upbeat at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) - Bombay after
the first two weeks of the final placements for the academic year 2013-14 that
started on December 1. By December 16, the institute had made 843 placements,
with offers coming in from as many as 245 companies. The highest offer, at
$135,000, came from durables and handset major Samsung Korea, which hired 14
candidates for both its US and Korea offices compared to just one last year.
Placement faculty in charge Avijit Chatterjee is confident of many more
companies coming in. "We are expecting 350 companies to make offers this time
round," he said. "We normally place anywhere between 800 to 900 students every
year, but this year it could be more."

{mosimage}Hiring from top-notch engineering campuses
appears to have seen a revival in the current year, with some of India's top
institutes seeing big companies, especially from the technology space, swooping
down on campuses, offering high pay packets. This year, a host of multinational
companies, including Microsoft, Samsung, Google, Facebook, Intel, Nomura and
Citicorp, have been active in the Indian campuses, along with home-bred firms
such as Flipkart. IIT-Bombay has seen a 10-15 per cent hike over last year in
the average salary being offered to students on the first day of campus
placements. The institute, like its peers in the country, keeps the name of the
students picked up by companies under wraps. IIT-Madras saw big firms such as
Oracle, Intel Technology and Nomura and Eaton Technologies make bulk
recruitments. IIT Delhi saw around 570 students getting placed upto December 16.
"The numbers are more or less the same as that of last year," says Shashi
Mathur, Professor-In-Charge, Training and Placement Cell of IIT-Delhi. "However,
this time, we are seeing more companies coming in for recruitment, as opposed to
fewer companies making bulk recruitment,"

At IIT-Kanpur on December 1, students accepted around
125 offers from 20 companies. As many as 225 companies are scheduled to
interview students this year compared with 170 last year at the institute. IIT
Kharagpur, meanwhile, saw the highest package of $125,000 in the first few days
of the placement. E-commerce company Flipkart is said to have made 26 offers at
Flipkart, the highest among any IIT. In the final campus placement, students get
picked up in their seventh or eighth semester of their course, and will be able
to join the respective companies by May, after they complete their
graduation.

At
IIT-Bombay, the offers came in from a mix of IT and engineering companies. The
top IT companies included Google, Microsoft, IBM and Linked In, while
engineering comprised Shell, Schlumberger and Eaton. Consulting major Goldman
Sachs had a presence this year, and so did top Indian firms such as Tata Motors
and Reliance Industries. The first phase of the placements will go on upto
December 18, and the second phase will start in the second week of January and
continue through July. Google picked up three people for is California office,
and seven for the Indian office. Investment firm WorldQuant made an offer of
Rs.38 lakh a year for a domestic posting
to pick up four students, while private equity major Blackstone offered Rs.35 lakh.

Start-ups vie with established firms

IIT Rourkee, on the
other hand, saw 60 companies making offers at the campus upto December 6,
placing 340 students, mostly from the IT sector. Some of the major MNCs that
came in to recruit from the campus include Google, Oracle, Morgan Stanley,
Goldman Sachs and Schlumberger. Large Indian companies that recruited included
ITC, Cairn Energy, Tata Motors, Reliance Industries and Reliance Jio Infocomm.
According to Keerthi Agarwal, student placement co-ordinator at the institute,
there were several start ups that came down to the campus too, including
advertising services company Wooqer, analytics company Axtria, and management
portal Indus Inside. These start-ups are offering salaries in the range of Rs.8 lakh to Rs.16
lakh per annum. Google made the highest offer at a whopping $1,25,000 per annum,
with additional bonuses and stock options, for a position at its global
headquarters in Mountain View, California. Overall, around eight students were
offered positions overseas in the first six days of placements at IIT
Rourkee.

At IIT
Kharagpur, 250 companies had visited the institute in the first six days of the
placement season, and 400 students were placed. Some of the major companies that
recruited from the campus include Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Schlumberger
Asia Services, Google, IBM, Shell, Abbott, SAP (Europe), Hindustan Unilever and
Housing. The highest domestic package offered was Rs.37
lakh and the highest offer from abroad $1.25 lakh, said Sudhirkumar Barai,
Professor-in-charge, training & placement.

Recruiters at campuses are broadly categorised into
four - consulting firms, investment banking companies, IT companies which
include internet based firms, and software companies, and traditional large
recruiters. Almost all major Indian companies, including Reliance Industries,
Larsen & Toubro and Asian Paints, among others, are major recruiters from
top-notch campuses.
It was not just money that
drove some students to pick up offers. Two students of IIT Kanpur are reported
to have rejected a Rs.1.31 crore offer from US technology
major Oracle to settle for more challenging but less paying jobs at Google.
Earlier, there had been attempts to pick up students through campus placements
even in the 5th or the 6th semester. However, this was later dropped as it was
seen to interfere with students' studies.
"Our
requirements in terms of trainees who join the company saw an increase between
financial year 2010-11 and 2011-12," says Yogi Sriram who heads HR at
engineering and construction major Larsen & Toubro. Thereafter, the pattern
of intake has been consistent with an average total requirement of trainees in
categories such as graduate engineer trainees, post graduate engineer trainees
and diploma trainees, notching up to over 4,000 per year, he added.

Overall picture still
grim

Experts say that
the placement environment has turned out to be better for the top institutes,
although the story is not so bright for the Tier 2 and 3 campuses. According to
E Balaji, former CEO of manpower consulting firm Randstad, it is the Tier 1
institutions, such as the IITs, and NITIE (National Institute of Industrial
Engineering at Powai in Mumbai) that are witnessing an increase in recruitment
from top-rung companies, while many graduates in smaller institutions are left
out, either because large companies do not visit these campuses, or companies do
not find the students employable.
Only 20 per cent
of the two lakh graduates that come out of 3,600 engineering colleges in the
country get placed in suitable jobs. "In that case, there is both unemployment
and underemployment," says Balaji. "Several engineers end up working as sales
executives, so there is no link between what they studied and what they do."
Even premier institutions had found it difficult to place all their students in
the recent past. During 2012-13, as much as 23 per cent students of IIT-Bombay
failed to get a placement, compared to 18 per cent in the year earlier, due to
the slowdown. Of the 1,421 students who registered for the placement programme,
only 1,099 or 77 per cent were offered jobs then.

Several engineering
colleges bore the brunt of the economic slowdown. In the first six months of the
current fiscal, as many as 116 engineering colleges and business schools asked
the technical education regulator All India Council for Technical Education
(AICTE) permission to shut down, compared to 100 in the whole of 2012-13. In
four states, over two lakh engineering seats lay vacant in the current academic
year, as only a fifth of graduates in the previous year go jobs as slowdown
hampered recruitment.

"The rebound is happening largely in recruitment by IT
companies in IITs, but not beyond that," says Manish Sabharwal, Chairman of
Teamlease, a staffing firm. There are signals that the confidence is coming back
in IT. However, average freshers' salary for IT majors such as Infosys, Wipro
and TCS has remained the same, since there is a glut of engineers at present.
"Recruitment by MNCs make headlines, but do not move the needle," he added.
Engineering and manufacturing companies are not adding recruits at the entry
level, and a rebound to 2007 levels of recruitment in these sectors is nowhere
in sight.
AICTE also said that the percentage
growth in number of engineering institutions in India has come down from high of
43.2 per cent in fiscal 2009 to 5.3 per cent in fiscal 2012. "In some cases,
half the seats at engineering colleges are not filled. Also, only half the
students that graduate get jobs in the first year, which is a cause to worry,"
says Balaji. "The overall picture is still not rosy."